Ultima 0.40 and .p Format

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Alhexx

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Hum, no, no new Ultima Release yet. But I'll release the "Ultima 0.40 Public Alpha #1" within the next few days.
I've been workin' on the .p format for some hours today, and I found out some interesting things...
The Vertex, Polygon and Edge Pools are divided into several "Sub-Pools". How they're divided is stored in the FiftySix-Pool...
This also means that I'm not very far from generating a new .p file, which can be accepted by FF7 (or at leats I hope so)

I haven't updated my .p File Description yet, however, I'll try to do that until next week.

You'll maybe get a useful beta of Ultima 0.40 within this year, too...

I'll keep you up-to-date.

 - Alhexx
 
Wonderful! I can't wait for it! By the way, is ultima in C++ yet?
 
Does anyone know where I can get a manual for VC++ like the PHP manual on php.net? If so, I could start getting Kefka into that and maybe get some more work done on it...
 
Bad News: There will be no alpha release this week. I've encountered some problems which want to be solved ... sorry.
But there will be definately a release within this year!

 - Alhexx
 
Alhexx: Same happends to me. Usually when i want to finish program in (fill any time limit) it takes me 2-3 x longer, no matter how hard i try.
 
The new FF7 p Format Description is online, just go and chekc it out!

http://www.alhexx.com

... and maybe this can be interesting for you, too...

http://www.alhexx.com/fyuffie.txt
http://www.alhexx.com/byuffie.txt

 - Alhexx

 - edit -

Maybe this is not what you have expected, but it's intresting anyway:

yuffie1.jpg
yuffie2.jpg


Now here comes what's cool: That triangle is 100% Ultima-generated! No rips; pure Ultima generation !
 
Does that means that you can build and save P files from scratch ? Yay ! thats great !
 
Yes, but until now, it only works with VERY SIMPLE model without textures and with only 1 group... but that'll be fixed soon...

I've got to write a very important class test tomorrow, but after that, I'll have a lot of free time ... hehe, that means Ultima improving deluxe ...

 - Alhexx
 
After reading the information in your file format descriptions, I believe the PSX data files are compressed (just too many files with .LSZ and .Z  extensions makes me suspicious). Now if I could decipher what a MIM file was.. I could make more sense of things (LOL).   I wonder if these are RLE compressed background image files?

What is the file structure of the PC version of FF7? On the PSX there are 6 ENEMY directories 1 battle directory and a FIELD directory.  The enemy ones I think have the model and animation information for each enemy each are titled LSZ. the Field file has BSX files .Z files and .DAT files.  I could be wrong however. the BSX files are relatively small though the .DAT are the next largest and the .Z files are the largest.  I wonder how and what they compressed these these files with though (mumble).  The only easy files to read are the collection of TIM files in the MENU directory (hehe).

The MINI directory has all the files for the MINI games in FF7 (surprise?).

Anyhow.. I'm puzzled what they used on the files to compress them, it doesn't seem to be standard compress format sadly (sigh).

Cyb
 
Hm ... I think you will have to check those older FF7 PSX Topics, AFAIK they contain a lot of useful info.

All others:
This goes out to mirex, ficedula and the other programmers out there:
Since I see that a lot of you guys have already build Viewers or things like that for the .p Models, it would be a great help for me if you could tell your knowledge to me. I'm especially interested in the Texturing and the Group System of FF7 .p models. So if you know anything interesting, please post it here. Some sourcecode would be *very* helpful, too.
If you don't want to make your source that public here, it'd be fine if you could send them to me via email.
The more help about the fiel format I get, the less time I have to spend on hacking it, and that means I'll have more time for writing Ultima.

Oh, and I've decided to release the first Alpha on Sunday evening, so, let's say in 48 hours...

 - Alhexx
 
Alhexx: Sure thing. I'll send you the HRC/P reader (and the battle model reader, not that there's much to it) source from the Remake engine, although it may be a bit complex (since it's got a load of Remake code in it too, of course...)

Cyberman: The compression used on FF7 files - both PC *and* PSX versions, I'm told, although I only have the PC version - is LZSS compression. My site has a description of the format (*not* complex, I should add, so don't go relying on it 100%) and a decompressor/compression program ('FFLZS') which *does* now work fine with the files. Likewise with the field backgrounds, etc - documents (hideously incomplete, but enough to get started) on my site, http://ficedula.cjb.net.
 
Some of the files in PSX version, most notably the program files, are just GZIP files concatenated back-to-back -- you can slice them apart with a hex editor and gzip -d the sections.
 
ficedula:
My site has a description of the format (*not* complex, I should add, so don't go relying on it 100%) and a decompressor/compression program ('FFLZS') which *does* now work fine with the files.
Click to expand...
Hmmm I didn't see a format description  :o for the file type (whine whine... :) ).  I'm still working on the MIM DAT and BSX files, so far no dice but it's different on the PSX than the PC, I suppose running FF7 under a PSX emulator that allows you to single step and view the memory as well might be handy (especially when dealing with opening and reading files).  I read somewhere that a few of the .BIN files are actually Data files as well. (sigh).

At least I got some interesting information you had on the 'text' format for FF7.  There choice of -0x20 each of the ANSI defined characters makes sense after reading that.  What I am trying to do is to 'view' the background images in the game.

My guess is these are 'hidden' in the field directory and they are the MIM files.  Does anyone have a dump of information that should be in the background image of ONE scene? That would help me in figuring out what is what in the files and have a better 'view' of the images.

Phaeron - GZIP should allow you to rip out multiple GZIPed files if they are concatenated. LZS is the biggest challenge.

As an Aside I can see the need for a VERY smart hacking tool now.  What I'm thinking about is a tool that creates a data structure based on XML information.  For example you are looking at a hex dump and you decide something is a unsigned long integer you can grab the address and create a new 'variable' for that location.  The same with TEXT bytes and data structures.  At least that's what I am thinking about.  Creating the data file isn't the problem, it's having a way to create the 'data' structure information that is :)

Cyb
 
Hmmm, you're quite right, the LZSS format description seems to've been lost, perhaps when I did the new site design; it certainly used to be on there. Thanks for pointing it out ... I'll try and locate it, and re-upload it.
 
ShinRa Inc.: (I just hope you're reading this topic)

You have modelled some models in Ultima, right? And you have saved them to the Ultima File Format (*.ult), right?
So I'll have to implement a useful Ultima-File-Importer into Ultima 0.40, right? ;)

 - Alhexx
 
ficedula: These things happen, would be cool to be able to know how to expand the LZS files so I can find out what is in or 'show' there contents, my 'TV' (short for TIM Viewer)  is becoming more a FF7 File viewer now (heh).

Alhexx: The happy file hacker, how about a plugin system for import and export for ultima?  This would allow people to add to ultima's.. ultimate (bad pun?) functionality :) Namely being able to export to formats such as POV, 3dS or any other 3D viewer by simply knowing the format and having a Compilor handy.  I know I would make a POV exporter (importer might be a bit hard to do).

Hopefully I can find whatever the .p files are on the PSX and use the wonderful information you have provided for making a .P viewer using OGL .

Cyb
 
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